


Rebirth

by Rasalahuge



Category: Captain America (Movies), Daredevil (TV), Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 11:03:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4784969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rasalahuge/pseuds/Rasalahuge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four broken people remember being something far more than just people. A character study on the archangels, reborn as heroes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rebirth

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know where this came from, except that I've been reading far too many Marvel x Supernatural crossovers recently. Confession: I have only watched one episode of the Daredevil TV series but I'm hoping I know enough about the character from other sources (comics and the last film) to have pulled it off.
> 
> Edit 19/9/15: Now with bonus banner art from my [tumblr](http://rasalahuge.tumblr.com/)

It’s the serum that cracks the wall, sends splinters running up through glass, a web of fissures ready to shatter at any time. If afterwards he is more likely to disobey, if he’s more ruthless, angrier and more desperate then Bucky is the only one who would notice. The only one who knows him well enough to know that even if he’d always had a temper the spark of wrath in his eyes is new. If he remembers the deep feeling of betrayal then he could not say why. If he remembers blood flowing over his hands and screams of innocents in agony then he ignores the sharp stab of guilt into his heart and uses it instead to help others. He stands up for the weak, for the marginalised and the bullied and prays silently that it is enough penance to silence the screams.

The ice is what shatters the faltering wall and brings the memory of something ancient and cruel into his conscious mind. He wakes in a century completely foreign and pretends as if it isn’t the first time he has emerged into a world completely changed. He wonders what happened to his brother and tries not to think about Bucky, tries not to make the comparison. The ice was not a prison but it feels like it as he wanders alone and wonders what his purpose is now. There is no grand design, no plan to follow and most of all no family.

What was his purpose if there was no war to fight?

Then there are aliens and the breath that had been caught in his chest eases. Even if the reason for his original rebellion is pointless now there is still a need for him. He can be a protector rather than a destroyer and maybe that will be enough to reconcile what he was with what he had become.

Lucifer always was an idealist.

Steve Rogers never obeyed an order he didn’t believe in.

***

If the wall cracked after his fall he wouldn’t ever know. The constant trauma of remembering and destroying those memories left him like shattered pieces on the floor. It wasn’t until later, after a man he knew but didn’t recognise refused to let him die, refused to fight him that the wall came down. Memories of that ancient, unrelenting being flooded out and filled in all the gaps, preserving the shattered memories and giving him stability enough to start putting them back in the right places.

He remembers orders, before and after, remembers following them to whatever end and remembers feeling that they were justified, that they were right. It is not the difference between the orders that sends him screaming from his dreams each night but the similarity. He remembers trying to kill the one he loved more than anything in the world and hating very second but not stopping, being unable to stop. He tries not to compare Steve to that loved one and finds he can’t, the feelings that swamp over are too similar, too close.

He knows that his orders after were wrong. But if his orders after were the same as his orders before then what has he been fighting for his entire existence?

He stares at a familiar face in a picture and wonders if the person he was before was a monster and the person he was after was also a monster when perhaps he should try to be the person in between. The memories are still scattered broken things but that’s alright because the important thing was that the person followed someone who knew which orders should be listened to and which to ignore.

Michael had always been a solider.

Bucky Barnes never had to question who he should follow to the end of the line.

***

The awareness had always been there. He felt as if he had been born with the knowledge that justice was more than just a prison sentence, that sometimes the law failed the innocent. If he dreamed of being able to snap his fingers and dispense justice then he could pretend to himself it was just a dream even if deep in his heart he knew better. When the world went dark for the final time it settled something in him, something ancient and powerful and coiled, just waiting for a chance. It was a quiet knowledge, one he didn’t feel the need to express, just a constant awareness that though he was now limited it did not mean his quest for justice would end.

If he feeds that justice with an anger and bitterness that if far older than he pretends to be then he just echoes his grandmother’s line. He has the devil in him. He tries not to smile at the irony and when he dreams of his brother and a silver blade, of blood and wings made of ash… well they are only dreams after all. He makes jokes about his sight and stands for the innocent no matter how much Foggy complains and at night he brings about justice when the law fails. He calls himself devil but in his dreams he is something else entirely. _Trickster_ his mind whispers to him but he ignores it.

He’s aware that not everyone agrees with his brand of justice. Vigilante is one of the kinder names he had been branded with. He’s not a hero but if he doesn’t stand for justice what will he become?

He stands on a roof listening to the sounds of Hell’s Kitchen and wishes he could guarantee he wouldn’t become one of the monsters he hunts in the night. He remembers the things he did, the things he _didn’t_ do and knows, in his heart, that he walks a fine line and if he were to stumble he wouldn’t find his way back. Not again.

Gabriel knew how to serve out just desserts.

Matt Murdock was always careful to know who needed justice and who needed to be brought to justice.

***

She hadn’t known. She wishes she had. She wishes that the tortures and pains of her early life had cracked that wall and given her something to hold onto. She wishes she had some truth, some purpose, something other than fear and terror and pain to guide her through a lifetime. Yet when she takes a hold of the infinity stone and her mind fights back against that power with something infinitely more ancient and more terrible she learns that life is rarely so kind. The memories awakened with the stone’s power coursing through her are memories of being the one with power, being the one inspiring fear and terror and inflicting pain. She wonders if she did not remember before this simply because if she had then Thanos and Ronin would be the least of their problems.

She remembers a life oppressing where she should have guided, harming where she should have healed. She remembers a life where she was destroyed by one of those she killed. She remembers and she knows that it was more than just a fluke of fate that she did not remember until now. She remembers all her siblings, those truly her family and those that Thanos called his own. She remembers and she vows that this time, this time it will be different. She is not without honour. Not anymore.

After all the slate has been wiped clean, her reputation for inspiring fear and terror has been erased by one heroic moment. If she does not take the chance, if she gives into being what she was before, then what was the point?

She stands at the shoulder of her new friend, a self-proclaimed Star Lord, surrounded by a family that wants her just the way she is and knows this is where she belongs. Not wholly good, she is uncertain she could do that, but a little good, a little bad and a guardian, a protector. As she should always have been.

Raphael was supposed to be a healer.

Gamora would be happy protecting others so that a healer was not needed in the first place.

***

Four broken people scattered across the galaxy were just trying to find their way in a universe far bigger than they were. One by one they remembered a life they had once lived, a life where they had been so much more and yet had been just as broken.

On a planet in a dark corner of the galaxy there was a door locked by four seals waiting patiently for the ones who would open it. Behind the door grew four trees, enormous and strong despite the lack of water.


End file.
